Over the past several years I have discovered a lot of great documentaries on the Internet. The frustrating part was trying to find them again for friends. Thus I started Video Journal(s). This Video Journal is about corruption, crony capitalism and corporate/Wall Street GREED.

I don't think people understand what Wall Street's GREED has gotten us into. Sure we all know about the 700 billion dollar TARP bail-out, and the 18 trillion dollars national debt. But, I don't think people are aware of all the trillions of dollars the FED (Federal Reserve) has loaned to the Wall Street Banks, which doesn't trickle down to main street, or the 700 trillion-to-1.2 quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble(s) that the World's banks are sitting on.

Friday February 16, 2018

President Trump's Proposed Budget Is Bad for U.S. National Securityamericanprogress.org | author | older, 03/01/17

There are several issues surrounding President Trump's proposed defense budget increase, starting with the fact that U.S. defense spending is already incredibly high: It currently accounts for more than one-third of the world's total military expenditures. According to the latest numbers from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the United States spent $604.5 billion on defense in 2016, more than four times the next-biggest spender, China, which spent $145 billion, and more than 10 times the third-biggest spender, Russia, which spent $58.9 billion. Further, the U.S. armed forces are already strong. According to Michael O'Hanlon and retired Gen. David Petraeus, "the United States has the best military in the world today, by far. ...
Read moreClick to zoom inTop 15 Defense Budgets 2016

But there is one quirk that consistently puzzles America's fans and critics alike. Why, they ask, does it experience so many mass shootings? Perhaps, some speculate, it is because American society is unusually violent. Or its racial divisions have frayed the bonds of society. Or its citizens lack proper mental care under a health care system that draws frequent derision abroad.

These explanations share one thing in common: Though seemingly sensible, all have been debunked by research on shootings elsewhere in the world. Instead, an ever-growing body of research consistently reaches the same conclusion.

Sue Klebold is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two shooters who committed the Columbine High School massacre, murdering 12 students and a teacher. She's spent years excavating every detail of her family life, trying to understand what she could have done to prevent her son's violence. In this difficult, jarring talk, Klebold explores the intersection between mental health and violence, advocating for parents and professionals to continue to examine the link between suicidal and homicidal thinking.

The failure of a months-long effort to help Dreamers is the latest display of legislative ineptitude.

A conservative senator from Oklahoma with a youthful visage, Lankford had been working since September to help so-called Dreamers. The 49-year-old Lankford dutifully attended bipartisan meetings, cobbling together ideas and trying to enlist support for a bipartisan deal. But when the group showed him the latest draft of their plan Tuesday night, Lankford was stunned. It was far from what he had expected.

"I looked through the outlines of the proposal and realized: 'This is nothing close to what we've talked about,'" Lankford said. ...
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Note: on the full 59:02 video look for small white (or black) circles on the Progressbar they denote the different news stories. You can move the pointer on the Progressbar to jump to each story, and around the video.

South African President Jacob Zuma resigned. Zimbabwe lost a man of conscience and courage with the death of Morgan Tsvangirai. And the future of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes under more doubt.

And why is Australia's Prime Minister banning sex between his ministers and their staff?

We are all reeling after yet another senseless shooting that took place at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen people lost their lives and more than a dozen are hospitalized. Donald Trump gave a speech addressing the tragic events saying that no child or teacher should be afraid of their lives while at school. Jimmy agrees with Trump but in order to fix this SOMETHING has to be done. We need real laws that keep assault rifles out of the hands of people who are going to shoot our kids. These Congressmen and lobbyists don't work for the NRA, they work for us. If you want to help go to www.everytown.org and write to your representatives. If they don't listen, vote them out.

That's an average of one school shooting every 60 hours thus far in 2018, more than double the number of school shootings recorded in any of the previous three years in that same period. Those numbers are according to data compiled by the gun control advocacy organization Everytown for Gun Safety, which defines a school shooting as any time a firearm is discharged on or around a campus.

Details are still emerging about what happened during Wednesday's shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, but as of 6:30 pm., at least 15 people had been reported dead. President Donald Trump has spoken vaguely about the need to curb shootings, saying after the Las Vegas massacre in October that the U.S. would start "talking about gun laws as time goes by." ...
Read more290 School Shootings In America Since 2013 | everytownresearch.org | current | graph

Death by China: Confronting the Dragon - A Global Call to Action by Peter Navarro
Peter Navarro is a Harvard Ph.D. economist and professor of public policy at the University of California, Irvine. His latest book Death By China is a sequel to his best-selling book The Coming China Wars and is now a documenatry film.
In addition to his work on China, Professor Navarro has written numerous books on strategically managing the business cycle from both an executive and a stock trading point of view. ...

Will there be war with China? This book provides the most complete and accurate assessment of the probability of conflict between the United States and the rising Asian superpower. Equally important, it lays out an in-depth analysis of the possible pathways to peace. Written like a geopolitical detective story, the narrative encourages reader interaction by starting each chapter with an intriguing question that often challenges conventional wisdom.

Based on interviews with more than thirty top experts, the author highlights a number of disturbing facts about China's recent military buildup and the shifting balance of power in Asia: the Chinese are deploying game-changing "carrier killer" ballistic missiles; some of America's supposed allies in Europe and Asia are selling highly lethal weapons systems to China in a perverse twist on globalization; and, on the U.S. side, debilitating cutbacks in the military budget send a message to the world that America is not serious about its "pivot to Asia."

In the face of these threatening developments, the book stresses the importance of maintaining US military strength and preparedness and strengthening alliances, while warning against a complacent optimism that relies on economic engagement, negotiations, and nuclear deterrence to ensure peace.

Note: on the full 59:02 video look for small white (or black) circles on the Progressbar they denote the different news stories. You can move the pointer on the Progressbar to jump to each story, and around the video.

Headlines

When Will This Stop? 17 Shot Dead in Florida School Massacre, the 18th School Shooting of Year

The Gun Trace Task Force is an elite unit of the Baltimore Police Department charged with getting illegal firearms off the streets. But a day on the job for several of its members included illegal searches and seizures of thousands of dollars, jailing innocent civilians, dealing illicit drugs or weapons and falsifying payroll documents.

Many of their tactics increased citizens' fear and resentment of officers and did nothing to abate the city's violent crime rate. Eight members of the task force were indicted last year. This week, two were convicted of racketeering, robbery and fraud. They face up to 60 years in prison.

There is an official call to disband the entire Baltimore PD, something the mayor says won't happen. Something to that effect has been implemented in Oakland and Camden, New Jersey -- but can you change a culture of high-level corruption without wiping the slate clean?

And Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is giving senators only one week to find a solution for Dreamers.

The Senate's much-anticipated immigration debate stalled on Tuesday with party leaders feuding over how to even begin. And there may not be much time left to reach a deal, as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the Senate's work on a solution to the expiring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program would be limited to this week. ...

... McConnell twice attempted to set up floor votes on a sanctuary cities amendment from Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and a competing proposal chosen by Democrats. But Democrats objected, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) saying the Toomey language "doesn't address Dreamers, nor does it address border security" -- the two basic elements underpinning this week's debate over the fate of hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants who will soon be at risk of deportation. ...
Read moreMitch McConnell Tricks The Democrats Again | TYT | 02/13/18 | 7:37

Michael Cohen, personal attorney for President Donald Trump, told The New York Times on Tuesday that he paid Stephanie Clifford (a.k.a. porn star Stormy Daniels)$130,000 in 2016. However, he insisted that the money was his own.

"Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly," Cohen told the newspaper. "The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone." ...
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Trump Still Hasn't Chosen A Science Adviser -- After 390 Days In Office.

A report written by a Georgetown University team led by Phillip Karber conducted a three-year study to map out China's complex tunnel system, which stretches 5,000 km (3,000 miles). The report determined that the stated Chinese nuclear arsenal is understated and as many as 3,000 nuclear warheads may be stored in the underground tunnel network.

Note: on the full 59:02 video look for small white (or black) circles on the Progressbar they denote the different news stories. You can move the pointer on the Progressbar to jump to each story, and around the video.

Headlines

Two Reuters Journalists Face 14 Years in Burmese Prison After Exposing Massacre of Rohingya Muslims

According to a 23-page document from U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, pharmaceutical companies funneled millions to pain-treatment advocacy groups who then turned around and promoted prescription painkillers to their clients. (See below for the full report.)
Purdue Pharma says its representatives have stopped marketing Oxycotin to physicians, but is that too little, too late?

In 2016, at least 42,000 Americans died after overdosing on opioids. The drug killed more people that year than falls, guns or car accidents -- and it isn't slowing down.

Five Banks Account For 96% Of The $250 Trillion In Outstanding US Derivative Exposure; Is Morgan Stanley Sitting On An FX Derivative Time Bomb?Zero Hedge | Author | 09/24/11

The latest quarterly report from the Office Of the Currency Comptroller is out and as usual it presents in a crisp, clear and very much glaring format the fact that the top 4 banks in the US now account for a massively disproportionate amount of the derivative risk in the financial system. Specifically, of the $250 trillion in gross notional amount of derivative contracts outstanding (consisting of Interest Rate, FX, Equity Contracts, Commodity and CDS) among the Top 25 commercial banks (a number that swells to $333 trillion when looking at the Top 25 Bank Holding Companies), a mere 5 banks (and really 4) account for 95.9% of all derivative exposure (HSBC replaced Wells as the Top 5th bank, which at $3.9 trillion in derivative exposure is a distant place from #4 Goldman with $47.7 trillion). The top 4 banks: JPM with $78.1 trillion in exposure, Citi with $56 trillion, Bank of America with $53 trillion and Goldman with $48 trillion, account for 94.4% of total exposure. As historically has been the case, the bulk of consolidated exposure is in Interest Rate swaps ($204.6 trillion), followed by FX ($26.5TR), CDS ($15.2 trillion), and Equity and Commodity with $1.6 and $1.4 trillion, respectively.
Read more

On September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists attacked the Unites States. They hijacked four airplanes in mid-flight. The terrorists flew two of the planes into two skyscrapers at the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact caused the buildings to catch fire and collapse. Another plane destroyed part of the Pentagon (the U.S. military headquarters) in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Officials believe that the terrorists on that plane intended to destroy either the White House or the U.S. Capitol. Passengers on the plane fought the terrorists and prevented them from reaching their goal. In all, nearly 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks.

Wall Street is an eight-block-long street running roughly northwest to southeast from Broadway to South Street, at the East River, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry (even if financial firms are not physically located there), or New York-based financial interests.

An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, and foreign policy objectives. Means of information gathering are both overt and covert and may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis,.

The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone & Petere Kuznick

Oliver Stone and American University historian Peter J. Kuznick began working on the project in 2008. Stone, Kuznick and British screenwriter Matt Graham cowrote the script. It covers "the reasons behind the Cold War with the Soviet Union, U.S. President Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, and changes in America's global role since the fall of Communism." Stone is the director and narrator of all ten episodes.

Historian Peter Kuznick says Eisenhower called for decreased militarization, then Dulles reversed the policy; the Soviets tried to end the cold war after the death of Stalin; crazy schemes involving nuclear weapons and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba put the world of the eve of destruction - with host Paul Jay

A report written by a Georgetown University team led by Phillip Karber conducted a three-year study to map out China’s complex tunnel system, which stretches 5,000 km (3,000 miles). The report determined that the stated Chinese nuclear arsenal is understated and as many as 3,000 nuclear warheads may be stored in the underground tunnel network.

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's ten-part, 18-hour documentary series, THE VIETNAM WAR, tells the epic story of one of the most consequential, divisive, and controversial events in American history as it has never before been told on film. Visceral and immersive, the series explores the human dimensions of the war through revelatory testimony of nearly 80 witnesses from all sides--Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as combatants and civilians from North and South Vietnam. Ten years in the making, the series includes rarely seen and digitally re-mastered archival footage from sources around the globe, photographs taken by some of the most celebrated photojournalists of the 20th Century, historic television broadcasts, evocative home movies, and secret audio recordings from inside the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations.

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